Seattle’s premier provider of Energy Healing

Posts tagged ‘love’

Because I believe that it’s our natural state to love (and be loved) unconditionally and without restrictions, I was surprised when I recently researched how people let others into their hearts and discovered that everybody has different rules about who they let in, and that many put parameters and restrictions on receiving love.

For instance, one person I asked told me that she didn’t open up all that much because “people might leave.” That person, even though she’s very self-aware, had put a restriction on what she would allow so she didn’t have to face the pain should something happen, or the friendship end, or someone leave her life.

This was a variation on a theme that emerged during my research: some people can be very open and energetically let people in, whereas others define themselves as very private and remain locked, restricting how much love they let in (and conversely, how much love they give).

Obviously, letting love in assumes there’s a foundation of safety, trust and love, as you wouldn’t let into your heart somebody who’s abusive or untrustworthy or has ulterior motives. If someone in your life is genuinely honest and loving and truthful, can you sense how open you are with them… or do you have conditions for receiving love? If a given person loves you unconditionally and completely, do you know it? Do you accept all of it or do you just let a sliver in?

One way to determine whether we are cutting off the love we receive is simply to examine our friendships and relationships. Looking at individual relationships and reflecting on how close they are and how much we feel we can share of ourselves gives us a good starting point for assessing the love we let in and the love we allow ourselves to express.

And if we find that we’re holding back a part of ourselves, something I encourage people to do is to find where the limitations lie and where they feel vulnerable. Once we know our limitations and vulnerabilities, we can choose to stretch a little beyond them and heal the parts where that stretching feels unsafe.

Also helpful for opening up is making a commitment to loving ourselves more, whether through practicing self-care or by looking at our self-talk, both in what we think and what we say. Frequently people will be very unkind to themselves, saying, “Oh, that was stupid” or “I’m really bad at that” instead of the more positive “I’m really good at this piece, and I’m going to focus on improving the other parts.” It may be surprising to realize how much negativity we can harbor, but we can receive things far better if instead of that harsh self-criticism there’s a positive focus on what we’re good at, and how we’re going to improve on the areas of opportunity.

Generally people shut people out if they fear loss or rejection. If we can dismantle the rules we’ve created for ourselves and let people in, every day will feel like there’s far more love in our lives.

Do you let your friends and your relationships fully into your heart? Would you like to live with more love but need further guidance? Please call Julie at 206.354.7090 to schedule a session.

Recently someone was telling me about a friend of hers, and how his heart was closed, wrapped in barbed wire, as she put it. I asked her if what she was saying was indeed true of her friend in this moment… and as she connected with the truth, she realized that in fact his heart had become open and what she was speaking was untrue.

Since that experience, I’ve reflected how we don’t always speak the truth that builds people up. I found myself aware of perceiving people based on the past–and it wasn’t necessarily a form of judgment; it was just that my perception of the person six months ago was no longer true in this moment.

If you imagine a tree growing from a sapling up to a big oak, there are huge shifts that a it undergoes over the course of the seasons and the decades. Its appearance changes, just like its shape and its beauty. As beings we do that: each moment we are different… so it follows that we have to let go of our perceptions and fixed ideas of who people are, because everyone evolves.

I have started to bring a sense of wonderment and curiosity to my interaction with others, whether they are new to my life or long-standing friends. I’ve been pleasantly surprised with what I learn about them and what aspects emerge from them that I might not have noticed before, because my awareness is no longer clouded by expectations or old perceptions of who they are. This has opened up my relationships and my flow through life to be truly more joyful and to make everything a lot more interesting.

The flip side of the coin is also letting go of our personal past and the stories we tell ourselves about it. If you pay attention to the things that you’re believing, experiencing, verbalizing and thinking, you realize that thoughts are very powerful. If we’re reinforcing our limitation by telling ourselves that nobody supports us, or certain things are always hard, we’re doing to ourselves the same thing we do to others (judge them by their past) and getting stuck on that idea of the past. If we can let those experiences go, heal them and transform our thinking, we can actually come to each moment clear and free to really experience the expansiveness, wonder and joy of that moment. This doesn’t mean that we don’t acknowledge what has come before, because it’s important to do that; it just means that the present moment doesn’t have to be filtered through the cloudiness that our past experience would impose on us.

We are not meant to get stuck in our experiences; we are meant to move through past and beyond them.

In releasing your expectations of others and of yourself, in choosing to speak with truth and with light to build people up (and to build yourself up), you can interact with others and the present moment with the curiosity to see what aspects you can witness and what may be revealed. And you (and they) have a chance to bring a fullness to the interaction that you might otherwise not have noticed.

There are two concepts I’ve been using with my clients lately that have been very useful in facilitating fast change.

These two concepts aren’t just mental. We can think of concepts as being mentally integrated, but in truth we have to make sure they go beyond the brain, because the brain is only one part and have the integration of all physical, mental, emotional and spiritual bodies.

The first concept is working with clients’ beliefs around how easy it is to heal.

Some people have the belief that healing or transforming is hard and that it’s difficult to let go of things. If that’s their belief, then usually that becomes their experience.

But healing is healing—it doesn’t matter if it’s a tiny thing (and they think nothing of clearing it) or whether it’s something that feels huge and overwhelming. It’s our perception that makes certain things appear to have greater weight than others. If something is tiny enough that we believe that healing it is easy and instantaneous, what’s there to stop us from applying that to the big things? Whether the large thing is a trauma or whether we’re holding on to something that’s no longer useful, healing can be done with ease, grace and be as instantaneous as serves our highest and best. It can be as easy as taking a breath in and out.

The other concept is seeing beliefs, concepts and emotional challenges, as just being energy or light. We tend to label things as good or bad, but they could just as easily be described as whether they serve us or have stopped serving us. When we release something or transmute it, we’re exchanging one form of energy for another. Sure, the new energy we choose might be lighter have a higher energy or vibration, but essentially it’s all light; it’s all forms of light in different frequencies or densities. And something that is love-centered has the ability to be lighter than things that are fear-based.

Both of these concepts have worked very well with my clients, and they were able to let go or heal or accept greater amounts of light far faster than before they had considered or integrated these concepts.

In one of my group meditations someone once told me that she felt like she was new to the practice and hence had a harder time sensing where she was holding energy. After we were no longer in a meditative state, she asked me a question and when I was giving her feedback, I inquired, “Can you feel where you’re holding energy—here and here?”

“Well,” she replied, “I can feel it here. And it’s not that I don’t believe you, but I can’t feel it in the other spot.”

“Close your eyes and focus within.”

She did, and then she said, “Oh, I can feel it now.”

I thanked her for showing everybody that sometimes you may not be able to feel something with your eyes open, but in a deeper state of focus it’s a little bit easier. “It takes practice to increase your awareness and sensitivity,” I added.

Later I learned that she had concluded that she wasn’t “advanced enough” or “evolved enough” for my class. She was comparing herself against other people’s experiences or what they had been able to do, and judging herself for her supposed lack of perception… with all of the insecurity that went with that self-judgment.

To illustrate how this wasn’t about how “experienced” or “advanced” this woman was, in the same group there was someone else who’s extremely gifted, empathetic, and really able to feel things—yet later I learned she would often experience frustration because there’s a part of her that really wants to see the energy rather than just feel it. She was caught in the judgment that seeing energy was better than feeling energy.

The fact of the matter is that wherever we are, and whatever our experience is at any given moment, it is perfect, and anytime we get stuck in comparing ourselves with others, we step out of the magic of the moment. Turning off our judgment (including judging ourselves for our self-judgment) and aligning with out heart, we can then treat everything just as information. That way, our self-doubt and tendency to compare show us where the inner opportunities exist for expansion and personal growth. And with that mindset it’s easier to have a fuller, more appreciative experience and to realize that we’re experiencing not only what is perfect but also what is ideal for us.

Sometimes I work with clients who have the hope or the expectation of working on something once and for that issue to be done and finished.

Whether in my group meditations or working individually with clients, I will often mention that it’s useful to think of an issue being akin to the layers of an onion. We all want to get to the root of something, but we might have to clear it in layers because we don’t have the capacity or the readiness to reach its core.

Yes, there are times when we’re able to address the whole issue, pattern, etc., because we truly are ready, and we do it and we’re finished with it. And then there are those times when we just have to work deeper and deeper, layer by layer, without judging ourselves or judging as wrong or bad that the work is gradual rather than sudden. Ultimately the pattern or the issues that we’re trying to clear may have served us up to that point in time, either as a self-protecting mechanism, or to create a sense of safety, or to hold us up or keep us alive.

If a beautiful house has rot, we don’t go rooting around and tear up the entire house, because we wouldn’t be able to live in it. The house still serves us and we can’t suddenly judge it as bad when it’s kept us alive and has been serving us. We take care of the individual boards and we maintain them, but we don’t tear everything up.

It’s the same with our healing experience. We can stay in a place of presence and joy and love and compassion, allowing ourselves to live essentially in our bodies without ripping things up or destroying the foundation. We start with an issue, and perhaps we’re able to do a minor repair or perhaps we get the entire issue or pattern all at once. It’s not I who decides what a person is ready for, and sometimes what they want to achieve with healing is greater than their whole being is ready to experience. However much we are able to clear is perfect in that moment; even if it’s a single layer that’s addressed, it doesn’t discount the progress or the transformation. We’re still lighter than when we started, and ultimately we all get to the root in our own timing. We can’t force or rush something that we’re simply unready for, and when there is full healing, we know it, because we feel a deep sense of completion of the process and an integration of all the layers.